Third Front is not a threat, say Congress and BJP

New Delhi, March 12 (IANS) The Third Front launched near Bangalore was no threat at all, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) asserted Thursday and predicted that the new formation would not last long. Downplaying the “get-together” of 10 parties, who are forging a front to counter the BJP and the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress described the new formation as “an unprincipled alliance” while the BJP said it would “vanish in the air” after the polls.

The 10 parties that got together at a massive rally in Tumkur, about 60 km from Bangalore, are the Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S), the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), the Forward Bloc, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the AIADMK, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Haryana Janhit Congress.

Congress Working Committee (CWC) member V. Narayanasamy said: “Definitely, they are not at all a threat to the UPA (United Progressive Alliance). UPA allies are intact.

“They (the new formation) are only for power. They don’t have any policies and programmes. The alliance will not continue for long,” Narayanasamy, who is also general secretary of the All India Congress Committee (AICC), added.

Echoing his view, arch rival and BJP leader Shahnawaz Hussain said: “The alliance will vanish in the air as they will go either with the NDA or UPA after the elections.

“These parties will not have any role in the elections. It will be a direct fight between NDA and UPA,” said Hussain, a former union minister.

“This is the alliance of the parties with inconsistency. The alliance will not last long and they are not at all a threat to us (NDA).”

He also referred to “such like-minded parties” getting together during the Manmohan Singh government’s trust vote in July 2008 and their lack of unity later.

Parties that supported the Left parties, which withdrew support to the UPA government over the India-US nuclear deal, included the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD). They are now with the NDA, Hussain said.